Roger Casement's Báinín Jacket

Made of Báinín (undyed wool), this lightweight jacket was worn by Roger Casement (1864-1916) when he worked in tropical climates with the consular service of the British Foreign Office.

Casement served in Africa and South America first as a clerk, and then as a human rights investigator.
In 1909, Casement was commissioned to go to Putumayo by the British Government. He was to investigate the treatment of indigenous people by the Peruvian Amazon Rubber Company.

The ‘Putumayo Report’, published in 1912, had considerable impact. It exposed the cruel treatment of the Putumayo people. The Report also gained Casement international recognition as a humanitarian. The British State acknowledged his contribution by giving him a knighthood.

Disillusioned with Colonial exploitation, Casement retired from diplomacy. He dedicated the rest of his life to the Irish Nationalist cause. Casement was a member of the provisional committee of Irish Volunteers. They launched on 25 November 1913, partly as a response to the formation of the Ulster Volunteer Force in January 1913.

During World War I, Casement conceived a plan for an uprising through an Irish-German alliance. He believed this alliance could be a way to securing Irish Independence from Britain.
Casement travelled to Germany to form an alliance for an Irish uprising. Realising an uprising would be futile, he returned to Ireland in an attempt to stop it. Casement was arrested in County Kerry by British authorities in April 1916. He was imprisoned in the Tower of London and found guilty of high treason on 29 June 1916. 
Casement was executed on 3 August 1916. His remains were eventually reinterred in Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin in 1965 after a long period of negotiations between the British and Irish governments. 

Object Number: HE:EW.4043

More Information
Garden, Alison, The Literary Afterlives of Roger Casement, 1899–2016 (Liverpool University Press, 2020)
Gibney, John. The behind the scenes story of Roger Casement's homecoming. RTÉ [online] 26 November 2020. Available at: https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2020/1105/1176097-roger-casement-remains-repatriation-britain-ireland-1965/ [Accessed 22/4/2025]
Grant, Kevin. “Bones of Contention: The Repatriation of the Remains of Roger Casement.” Journal of British Studies, vol. 41, no. 3, 2002, pp. 329–53. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.1086/341152. Accessed 1 Dec. 2023. [Assessed 22/4/2025]
Laffan, Michael. Casement, Sir Roger David. Dictionary of Irish Biography (dib.ie) https://www.dib.ie/biography/casement-sir-roger-david-a1532 [Assessed 22/4/2025]
Philips, Roland, Broken Archangel: The Tempestuous Lives of Roger Casement (Bodley Head, 2024)
Ó Síocháin, Séamus, ‘More power to the Indians’ Roger Casement, the Putumayo, and indigenous rights’. Journal of Anthropology. Vol 14 (2) 2011. https://mural.maynoothuniversity.ie/id/eprint/3605/1/SOS_More_power.pdf [Accessed 23/4/2025]
The Casement Report 1903 https://archive.org/details/CasementReport/page/n1/mode/2up [Accessed 22/4/2025]